Leog, All flac format files are lossless. Level 8 compression is flac's highest level of compression where with "uncompressed" there is no compression at all (like .wav files). The benefit of using the flac format is that your music can be tagged with metadata. .wav files have no inherent support for tags. However, many people believe that compression causes harm to the music so dBPoweramp started offering the "no compression" option. - Dick

Vladimir is right about the hard disk space. I use level 5 compression as I don't find the space savings between 5 and 8 to be that large. I use compression because I couldn't hear any difference between compressed and uncompressed files. Some people say that they can also hear the difference between flac and wav files. I'm not saying there isn't any difference - just that I can't hear it but it may be that my system (or my ears) is not resolving enough. Be that as it may, I think I would choose flac over wav for the tagging capabilities. There are programs that will tag wav files but, as far as I know, the tags are kept separate from the wav files. This may limit portability in the future because there's no standard way of doing this.

In either case you are right to do your research now. Once you have a substantial library of ripped music, you REALLY don't want to have to go back and start over. In this regard backups of your music library are essential as hard drives do fail.

Why bother to FLAC encode this? Just rip to .wav. It will only take twice the disk space and sound a lot better. Even lossless files have sonic problems on playback, even though they compare with static data compares. Even changing FLAC back to .wav sounds better.

Leog, Yes, that's what metadata is. Most people just refer to them as "tags." The file specifications for flac, mp3, ogg and other file formats include "space" for this information. The wav format does not. It's a matter of convenience. As Steve mentions above, some people can hear the difference. I'd say try listening to some familiar music ripped to various formats and different compression levels. Pick the one that sounds best to you. Trust YOUR ears. Best of luck. - Dick